For to Gaze Awhile
by Equestrienne Dreams
Summary: In the wake of post-Theisman Coup Haven, Eloise Pritchart and Javier Giscard find a moment to themselves among fields of gold.


"Are you sure they're not dying without you?"

Eloise smiled, lounging back against Javier's chest as miles of empty, golden-green grass spread out around them. Painfully blue skies with stark white, fluffy clouds blazed sapphire overhead, and she sighed in bliss as her hair spilled over her lover's shoulder and he leaned over to kiss her sweetly.

"I'm sure they are," she said dreamily, the warmth of the day soaking through her. "I just happen to not particularly care."

"That's my girl," said Javier, laughter in his voice. "After all, you don't get many days like this."

"I don't," said Eloise, almost painfully honest. "And even fewer of them are with you."

His hand came up to stroke her hair, and she nearly purred under the touch. "Which is why we have to take advantage of them as much as we can." He tilted her chin to bring her eyes to his. "Ellie, we have to talk about it now. You know we do."

"No." She hated, _hated _how timid, how _tiny _her voice sounded, and a part of her soul flinched away from it. "Please, Javier, don't."

"We have to." There was the admiral, the admiral she loved, and in this as in nothing else, President Eloise Jehanne Pritchart had no authority behind her.

"All right," she said at last, slipping into the dialect of Nouveau Paris, resting her forehead against his for a brief moment before she faced him again. "Tell me, Javier."

"I love you," he said simply, and it amazed her, again and again, how her throat closed every time she heard those words from his lips. "I love you, Ellie. I will love you until the end of time."

"As I will you," she said in return, because it was the truth, and also because it was all she could say as tears clogged her voice.

"But if something happens to me," he went on, and a part of her shrieked "_no!_", wanted to cry and hide away, "if something happens to me, Ellie, you have to promise me you won't stop living."

_Could there be a life without him? _she wondered, but she already knew the answer.

There could be, there _would _be, as there had been a life after she lost her sister. A scarred life, a broken life, but a life nonetheless. Her world had not ended with Estelle Pritchart's death.

It had simply broken in two.

So, too, would her world not end with the death of the man she loved, however fiercely, however entirely she loved him. She had known, from the very first, that she could lose him at any time. That her heart could well end up shattered again, broken to splinters on the anvil of lost love.

And he was worth it. Oh, God in Heaven, was he worth it.

"I won't," she said, her eyes on his, and meant it heart and soul.

"I thought," she said after a while, "that I would die when I lost my sister. I thought I'd died with her." She took a deep breath, felt his arms around her, relaxed in the knowledge that, whatever came, whatever sorrow awaited her, no matter how much or how little time she had with the man she loved, what they had would transcend the years they'd had it. Two centuries from now, no matter when she lost him – _if _she lost him – she would still be just as wholly loved by this man as she was right now.

And nothing – no war, no Committee, no tragedy of the universe – could ever take that love from her.

"A part of me did die with her," she admitted then, quietly. "And if something happened – Javier, if something happened, a part of me would die with you. You have to know that."

His arms tightened hard about her. "I do."

"But nothing can ever erase what we have. What we've had, what we've shared – it's ours. For as long as one of us breathes, it's _ours._" She turned to look him fully in the eyes. "I can't promise I'll find another love if I lose you, Javi. Just as I can't promise I won't. But whatever it is, you are the love of my life. The one great love of my life. And no matter who else I love, or how I love them, I will _always _love you. Just as much as I do right now – if not a thousand times more."

"Then I won't be leaving you lost," he said as he kissed the tears from her cheeks, and the relief in his voice would have buckled her knees if she'd been standing.

"No," she said softly, raising one hand to cup his face. "You won't. I'd grieve, Javier. Long, hard, and always. And I'll pray with every breath I have that we've centuries yet, that a hundred years from now we'll look back on these days from our little apartment in some quiet, sleepy town and laugh and laugh at how mad it was – and marvel at the sheer audacity of what we managed to do. But I will never look back on this, on _us, _and think for one moment that anything at all was left unsaid. I love you. I will love you until my last breath. I will never doubt that you feel the same. And if the worst does happen, after time has dulled the grief, I won't close out the possibility of loving someone else. Because if I did, I'd be denying everything we've stood for, wouldn't I?"

His eyes burned into hers, hazel into topaz, raw with desire, with love, with a flame that hadn't died long after it should have guttered into darkness – a flame that had, in fact, only burned brighter as years followed upon years.

She kissed him then, fingers curling in his short hair, giving herself up to passion she'd never lose. His hands stroked over arms and back and sides, curved over her breasts, and she went soft and willing as his mouth turned the kiss deeper, richer.

Unstoppable as the tides, inevitable as the beat of a human heart, they made love in the golden grass of the nation they loved. The future they couldn't predict, and the past was prologue; this, here, was their shining present, and even when it too was past, it would always be _there._

_Many years have passed since those summer days upon the fields of barley  
See the children run as the sun goes down among the fields of gold  
You'll remember me when the west wind moves upon the fields of barley  
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky when we walked in fields of gold  
When we walked in fields of gold  
When we walked in fields of gold_

_When we walked in fields of gold…._


End file.
